Eating Disorders

The fact that you’ve made it this far says that you already know a lot: You know that an eating disorder is a serious problem, and you know that disorder treatment may be your last best chance. An eating disorder isn’t something that anybody outgrows, or that simply goes away; an eating disorder isn’t something that will simply disappear if you don’t talk about it. On the contrary, eating disorders grow out of very real physical and psychological roots, and only professional eating disorder treatment can offer eating disorder victims any kind of hope for real and meaningful recovery.

Unfortunately, eating disorders are rarely discussed and only dimly understood in polite society. There is a certain stigma attached to the idea of an eating disorder, an onus that shames eating disorder victims into silence and keeps the general public largely in the dark. That sort of chilled climate is deeply inimical to disorder treatment, which relies first and foremost on the sort of honest awareness fostered by open debate and uninhibited discussion.

The rub, for victims of eating disorders and the people who care about them, is that eating disorder treatment does and must start with thorough self-education. To beat your eating disorder, you’ve got to understand eating disorders in general: why they occur, how they work, what rehab programs do to eliminate them. In the end, you can’t fight what you can’t see, and only those eating disorder patients who approach rehabilitation with informed and open minds can hope to achieve any kind of meaningful healing.

Again, if you’re here, you’re already off to a good start: You know what an eating disorder can do, and you know you need help to beat yours. Now, you’ve got to follow through: You’ve got learn what you need to learn about eating disorders, and educate yourself about your eating disorder treatment options. Make no mistake: The fight against eating problem is far from easy, and the eating disorder healing process will try even the most resolute patients.

That said, though, treatment is in many respects the most important challenge you’ll ever undertake, and the truth is that you can’t afford not to get help. For your own sake, and for the sake of the people who care about you, let today be the day you starting making eating disorder recovery a reality. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.

Understanding Eating Disorders

An eating disorder, like drug addiction and depression, is the product of an underlying disease. In practical terms, that means that eating disorder victims don’t choose to have eating orders, and that eating disorder victims can’t simply choose to get better. On the contrary, only professional eating disorder treatment that addresses the physical and psychological roots of the disease can lay the groundwork for lasting and long-term healing.

Speaking broadly, an eating is any condition associated with compulsive abnormalities in an individual’s eating habits. The most widely-known types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, which are characterized, respectively, by chronic under-eating and self-induced vomiting after meals. Binge eating is also an increasingly common disorder, with victims prone to sporadic bouts of massive food consumption.

It’s important to understand at the outset that an eating disorder is never a function of individual volition. Again, an eating disorder is a disease, and like all diseases eating disorders strip their victims of the ability to willfully get healthy. A diabetic, for example, doesn’t decide to have low insulin levels; hypertension patients doesn’t decide to have high blood pressure. By the same token, an anorexic or a bulimic or a binge eater doesn’t choose to suffer from an eating disorder. In the end, that’s just not how disease works, and believing otherwise is deeply inimical to the eating disorder recovery process.

But what of the disease itself?: What are the actual underpinnings of eating disorders, and how do they endanger the health of eating disorder victims? The jointly physical and psychological nature of eating disorders is of special interest here, particularly to the extent that it reveals the inherent complexity of eating disorder treatment. Eating disorders grow out of chemical imbalances on the one hand and emotional health issues on the other, with the obvious corollary that eating disorder treatment can only be effective if it addresses the disease wherever and however it exists. It isn’t enough, simply put, for eating disorder treatment to provide patients with an exclusively medical solution, or an entirely psychotherapeutic fix. On the contrary, effective eating disorder treatment is and must be comprehensive eating disorder treatment. Anything less, in fact, doesn’t really qualify as eating disorder treatment at all. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.

Eating Disorders and Depression Treatment

The intimate connection between eating disorders and depression means that eating disorder treatment is often inextricably bound up with depression treatment. Indeed, any competent eating disorder treatment program must be founded upon a thorough evaluation of its patients’ mental health, and an adept understanding of the extent to which clinical depression can influence eating habits. In the fight again eating disorders, that sort of expertise is the best ally you’ve got.

As might be expected, the connections between eating disorders and clinical depression are both physiological and psychological in nature. Both diseases, after all, are outgrowths of bifurcated causes, and it follows that their points of nexus should exist in two distinct dimensions. What that means, in simpler terms, is that joint eating disorder and depression treatment can only work if it’s inclusive in its scope and holistic in its vision. To get better, you’ve got to get all the way better.

From a physical perspective, eating disorders and depression are both linked to abnormal levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in patients’ brains. In fact, the serotonin connection has led some doctors and researchers to posit that eating disorders and depression are in fact different manifestations of the same disease, with the obvious conclusion that both conditions should always be treated within the same framework. In any event, the undisputed fact is that eating disorder treatment and depression treatment are both grounded in serotonin-centric medical therapies, which aim to restore normal function in patients’ neural metabolism.

But, again, neither eating disorders nor depression can be construed in expressly physical terms, and so it is that eating disorder treatment and depression treatment both employ intensive psychological counseling services in helping patients achieve lasting health. To get better, eating disorder victims and clinical depressives both have to develop new ways of thinking about themselves and the world; real recovery, whether from depression or an disorder, demands real personal growth, and only those patients who receive expert psychotherapeutic care can hope to really achieve it. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.

Eating Disorders, Drug Abuse and Drug Addiction

The chemical and psychological instability that underlie eating disorders can also be conducive to drug addiction and drug abuse. With that in mind, an eating disorder treatment program must account for any and all forms of drug dependency in its patients, and the most successful eating disorder treatment plans are those which provide expert drug treatment whenever and wherever it is called for.

Any form of rehabilitation, be it eating disorder treatment or drug treatment, must address the full scope of the disease at issue. A rehab program which fails to do so, to put it bluntly, isn’t much of a rehab program at all, and no recovery plan can hope to be effective if it poses a limited solution to its patients’ problems.

What that means, in a practical sense, is that an eating disorder patient who abuses drugs can’t be healed with eating order disorder treatment alone, in the same way that a chronic drug addict with a nascent disorder can’t get well solely by virtue of addiction counseling. Recovery, in the end, is and must be a holistic undertaking, and only those patients with access to a full range of rehab services can expect to stay healthy over the long haul.

What that means, in a practical sense, is that an eating disorder patient who abuses drugs can’t be healed with eating order disorder treatment alone, in the same way that a chronic drug addict with a nascent eating disorder can’t get well solely by virtue of addiction counseling. Recovery, in the end, is and must be a holistic undertaking, and only those patients with access to a full range of rehab services can expect to stay healthy over the long haul.

The bottom line: In choosing an eating disorder treatment center, you need to find a facility which can treat as you need to be treated. As we’ve already noted, you can’t get better without help…but more than that, you can’t get better without the right kind of help, without help that delivers anything and everything you need. In the fight against your eating disorder, nothing less could ever cut it. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.

Eating Disorder Rehabilitation

As an eating disorder is invariably the product of physical and psychological conditions, so must eating disorder rehabilitation pose both physical and psychological solutions. Effective disorder treatment is, simply stated, that which provides patients with holistic care: for body and mind, for self and spirit. If you want to beat an eating disorder, you can’t afford to settle for a partial solution.

Again, eating disorders, from a physical perspective, are most commonly associated with irregular levels of serotonin in the human brain. Eating disorder treatment, then, very often begins with a medical regimen designed to restore a patient’s normal metabolic processes, on the ground that such chemical stability will lay groundwork for more lasting recovery.

And such medical therapy is, at best, only groundwork, because eating disorders are the product of both physical and psychological causes. Meaningful eating disorder treatment is that which promotes lasting health, and lasting health can only be the product of intensive eating disorder counseling. The most successful eating disorder rehab programs, in this sense, are those which emphasize the long-run emotional health of their patients, and help them develop new understandings of themselves and their worlds.

Above else, eating disorder rehabilitation is about personal growth, and personal healing. To beat an eating disorder, you’ve got to get comfortable with yourself: You’ve got to learn how to live in your own skin, in a way that’s conducive to lasting health and long-term vitality. The road to eating disorder recovery, it’s worth noting, is hardly an easy one to travel: No one should tread it lightly, and no gets better without suffering a little along the way. That said, successful eating disorder rehabilitation is, in the end, more than worth the costs entailed by it. Let today be the day you start finding that out for yourself. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.

Disorder Recovery

The goal of treatment is a deceptively simple one: to help patients develop normal eating habits. Of course, that which seems obvious rarely is, and it’s important to note, in conclusion, the complexity of eating disorder recovery. Recovery means getting better physically and psychologically. It means breaking old habits and learning new ones; it means changing the way you live, and the way you think. Disorder treatment can only work, in the end, if it helps you become a new person, and it follows that treatment can only ever be as successful as you make it.

Think of it like this: No disorder treatment plan can help you get better if you don’t want to get better. Recovery is and must be a fundamentally patient-driven process, an undertaking whose success or failure depends ultimately on those individuals who benefit from it. Yes, you need help to beat it…but that help is can only ever be what you make of it, and you won’t ever achieve any kind of meaningful treatment recovery without playing an active role in the healing process.

What that means, above all else, is that you’ve got to commit yourself to recovery before enrolling in a treatment program. It’s not enough to check into an eating disorder treatment center and then simply wait for the recovery to start; eating disorder treatment, you might say, isn’t a spectator sport. You really can get better, if you resolve to make it happen…but that’s a big if, and you’re the only person in the world who could ever have the power to give it meaning.

And so, please: For your sake and the sake of the people who care about you, make the commitment. Resolve to get better. Eating disorder treatment is too important to leave for tomorrow, or the next day; start the process now, when you know you’ve got the strength to do something about it. The future won’t wait. Neither should you. For additional information on the private dual diagnosis programs and other drug treatment programs at The Watershed, please visit our main Drug Treatment page, and our main Dual Diagnosis page. For immediate assistance call The Watershed anytime at 1-800-861-1768.